The position of NPWJ president is currently vacant. Senator Sergio Augusto Stanzani-Ghedini was the President of NPWJ from 1997 until 17 October 2013, when he sadly passed away. Sergio Stanzani refused to take part in Mussolini's "Italian Social Repubblic" and joined the Resistance in Romagna, where he passed the front. After the war, he organised the Italian Student Union (UGI), the lay organization of the university students, which constituted with other student organisations the National Italian University Representative Association "UNURI". He was President of the UNURI in 1952 and 1953. He later worked as a General Manager of the industrial conglomerate "Finmeccanica" in the sixties, and was a member of the Italian Liberal Party (PLI). Together with Marco Pannella and others, he left the PLI to establish the Radical Party. He was elected to the Senate in 1979, 1983 and 1987 and then again in 1994.